Without Mixmania, Star Académie would not have existed. Without Mixmania, there wouldn’t have been eight chapters of The Voice, let alone issues of The Voice Junior. Without Mixmania there wouldn’t have been a catchy tune like Tu t’en vas (and that’s good for me)!
Posted at 7:15am
Twenty years ago, in August 2002, Vrak launched one of Quebec’s first musical reality shows, bringing eight teenagers – the famous mix – together in a huge, colorful loft. Divided into two groups, No Reues (girls) and Urban Defense (boys), these young people learned to sing and move in the eye of the cameras. And they performed in a 100% French speaking Candy Pop.
No one could have foreseen the stratospheric success of Mixmania, which nearly sparked a riot at Quebec City’s Galeries de la Capitale, where 12,000 fans screamed Toucher le Ciel’s lyrics. “You and me up, you and me, we’ll never stop!” »
Let’s go back to 2002, the pre-Star Academy era, when hot shows like American Idol roared for just a few weeks. It was the time when purists threw up on this television subgenre, doomed to go to shame with butterfly clips in their hair and stripes in their “ketchup chip” ribbons.
Yuck, reality TV! These “artists” don’t make art, they make indigestible sausage with a commercial flavor.
How wrong these spoilsports were. How they lacked vision.
Twenty years after Mixmania started, two of its former contestants, William Cloutier (Mixmania 3) and Krystel Mongeau (Mix 4), won the final seasons of Star Académie on TVA. Mixmania 2’s Claudia Bouvette has come a long way at Big Brother Celebrities on Noovo, releasing an excellent electropop album called The Paradise Club.
Photo CATHERINE LEFEBVRE, Special Collaboration
Claudia Bouvette took part in Season 2 of Mixmania before embarking on the Big Brother Celebrities adventure and releasing an album, The Paradise Club.
If you follow La voix you’ve probably seen a number of previous mixes including Krystel Mongeau (her again!), Redgee (mix 4 winner), Gabriel Forest (mixmania 3) and Tommy Tremblay (mixmania 2). Ah yes, Anne-Sophie Demers (Mixmania 2) has also moved into XOXO’s cardboard flats, but let’s not open that still painful file, thanks.
To gauge the powerful impact of Quebec’s oldest musical reality show, Crave launches Wednesday’s documentary Mixmania: 20 Years Later, which spotlights the 2002 cohort, the Original Mixes. It’s very good, if a bit short at around forty minutes. There was a movie theme here of at least an hour and a half, easy.
In an old monastery setting, Annabelle, Julie, Ariane, Frank, Emmanuel and Pierre-Luc confide in Bianca Gervais – who also directs the documentary – to point out the pros and cons of being fed by the shrill screams of children at such a young age Bell Center and FrancoFolies. How do you get back to slicing pressed chicken at the IGA without feeling 18-year-old?
Mixmaniacs note: Caroline Marcoux-Gendron and Benjamin Laliberté refused to participate in the Crave documentary. You have not been forgotten.
At the height of the pop wave that propelled Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, Mixmania knew how to create approachable idols that Gen Yers could relate to instantly. In episodes broadcast by Vrak, the Mix repeated their words, made mistakes in their choreography, and cried when they didn’t like a piece of clothing, making them more human than a Justin Timberlake, untouchable, infallible, and priceless.
By making their private lives public on TV, Mixmania contestants cemented their close bond with their fans long before the arrival of social media. Today, pop stars spread confessions, actions or house tours on TikTok and Instagram. In 2002, everything, everything, to know everything about the mix, you had to buy Cool magazine.
In their living room, tens of thousands of mixmaniacs have remade No Regrets’ choreography and copied their Y2K clothing style, which oddly has now been recycled by Gen Z.
The most intriguing part of the Mixmania phenomenon is the location of the French. All the songs of the four seasons, effective and catchy, were written in our language. In 2002, the pre-teens cried out on Party de Garçons, or The 5 Fingers of the Hand. In 2011 it was love point zero or as long as we love each other.
And today ? A rumor has been circulating about a possible revival of the Mixmania format and talks have been started in that direction. However, Bell Media preferred to buy the documentary by Bianca Gervais, which torpedoed the reincarnation project.
However, it is obvious that a Mixmania 2022 would work. When the Glamies sang season two, this show broke the ice and took their place. And when competing reality shows want to replenish their contestant pool, other mixes have to dance, dance and sing, sing, hey, oh!